SDG&E’S SMOOTH POWER STATION GETAWAY

In life as in a good detective novel, a good getaway requires some slick shrewdness. Sometimes the getaway is helped by a hapless victim or bystander who becomes an accomplice by choosing to look the other way. Better not to risk the anger of the fleeing perpetrator than extend a foot as they try to run away. In a novel or movie, these can be amusing images, but not so amusing when the victims may be a community and the accomplice is their city government.

Such is the case in Chula Vista where SDG&E is making a clean getaway with a proposal for the relocation of a large electric substation to be built a half-mile south of where the recently imploded power plant once stood. The relocation is intended to allow better uses at the old plant site. Sounds great right? Not so fast. The design for the new substation violates the bayfront plans recently approved and celebrated, runs afoul of an agreement between the city and SDG&E, and also includes new poles, towers, overhead power lines and structures that exceed the building height limits at the proposed location.

An agreement reached between the city and SDG&E in 2004 and the Chula Vista Local Coastal Program both require that power lines be placed underground and the bayfront be maintained as an underground district. The ink is hardly dry on the Chula Vista Bayfront Master plan and the rules are already being swept aside.

The reason is simple – fear. If the city makes a fuss over details like the agreement with SDG&E and the city’s land use rules, the consequences might be the new substation ends up staying in the current spot, disrupting the bayfront plans. The city shouldn’t accept the false choice between looking the other way, hoping it increases the chances the relocation is approved by state officials, or enforcing the agreement with SDG&E and its own land-use regulations.

The consequences of looking the other way are serious and shouldn’t be ignored. Residents and businesses in southwest Chula Vista will have to accept new blight, more obstructed views and roadblocks to their access to the bay in the form of overhead lines and structures – agreements be damned, err, ignored. If a similar substation design were being proposed in the “Golden Triangle,” would this conversation even be occurring? So why are the nearby working-class neighborhoods of southwest Chula Vista different?

As Chula Vista mayor, I was involved in the negotiation of the agreement with SDG&E which provided future power lines would be installed underground, and the bayfront maintained as an underground district. The substation proposed by SDG&E ignores this agreement and the Chula Vista Local Coastal Plan adopted by the Chula Vista City Council when the bayfront plan was approved.

The integrity of our agreements and land-use rules are only as good as our willingness to enforce them. Years of hard work went into plans reflecting the vision of our community for the bayfront, which call for a place free of industrial wires strung across the skyline. It’s time to stop looking the other way, stand up, extend a foot and do the right thing.

Padilla served as Chula Vista mayor from 2002-2006, as a member of the California Coastal Commission from 2005-2007 and as a commissioner for the Unified Port of San Diego from 2009-2011.